Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight

In the summer of 1970, 18 days before he died, Jimi Hendrix headlined at the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK.

I just got back from watching his Isle of Wight performance via DVD at the Visualite. It was very cool. They had a pretty large screen with a projector displaying the video and they had the sound system cranked. The performance was lightly edited so it had a good flow like a live performance should. More than once I almost forgot I was watching a video and felt like I was a real concert.

Since Hendrix is usually grouped with all the drug and booze casulties of that time period it was revealing to see him in the performance. What I saw tonight was not a junkie on his way out but an artist at the top of his game. It proves to me completely that his death was accidental and not the culmination of an abuser's lifestyle.

I also saw a in person what I had read about him as far as his growth was concerned. He only played two of his 'hits,' Purple Haze and Foxey Lady and he didn't exactly fly through them but they were not the same songs you hear on the radio. Like Dylan, he was unable to play the same song the same way twice. He got bored and that was easy to see. Also, newer songs like "Freedom" and "Back from the Strom" had a lot more energy and were truer to the recorded versions that the old stuff.

His humor came through a couple of times also. At one point between songs someone must have yelled the name of a song they wanted to hear and Jimi mumbled, "Yeah, we'll uh, play that later...next time." During 'Machine Gun' there was a long drum solo while Jimi gave instructions to the sound guys and halfway through the solo he did a little riff from the song from the side of the stage and smiled at the drummer. Near the end of the show he signed off by saying, "peace, love and all that bullshit."

I got into Hendrix early back when I was in tenth grade and I have always wanted to see a live show on a big screen at high volume and tonight, like my trip to Wrigley Field, was a rare fulfillment of a dream.